Publishing Steering Committee Telco — Minutes

Date: 2018-04-20

See also the Agenda and the IRC Log

Attendees

Present: Bill McCoy, Luc Audrain, Tzviya Siegman, Ivan Herman, Dave Cramer, Rick Johnson, Liisa McCloy-Kelley, Rachel Comerford, Garth Conboy, Bill Kasdorf, Jun-ichi Yoshii, George Kerscher

Regrets: Ivan Herman

Guests:

Chair: Luc Audrain

Scribe(s): Dave Cramer

Content:

1. Epubcheck “ask”

Bill McCoy: I sent that email after missing some calls
… I wasn’t sure if we’d quantified what we wanted people to pay
… we wanted to start penciling in people for amounts
… Karen talked to overdrive at ebookcraft
… we need to take the next steps
… how much will we ask for?
… I didn’t get an answer, so it’s still an open question

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: we should take a proposal to the PBG
… Bill, you had an idea on how to structure?

Bill McCoy: it was based on previous conversation
… 100K is too much
… 1k isn’t enough
… so we’re in the 5k to 20k range
… we should ask double what we expect
… that’s what led to the numbers in the email
… we need to make an ask to find out what the market would bear
… we should ask on the high side, but within reason

Bill Kasdorf: we need to define tiers of sponsorship

Tzviya Siegman: we do have the estimates for hour
… I thought we were putting together an RFP
… but we also haven’t settled on the fundraising platform, and that needs to be in place

Rick Johnson: early in this conversation, we’d talked to larger customers of coresource
… there was consensus that heavy users a number of 10k would be looked at as a cost of doing business

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: is that annual or one-time?

Rick Johnson: that was for the “how to you fix it” conversation
… it’s at least a data point

Bill Kasdorf: publishers not reading systems?

Rick Johnson: yes

George Kerscher: I don’t know if MIT can accept funds
… they might take a hefty cut
… we need to find out where money is going
… DAISY might be able to help, or EDRLab

Bill McCoy: I see RFP process and soliciting proposals as independent of donations
… if we serialize those things we’ll lose time
… knowing how much $ we have will help
… we should do things in parallel

Luc Audrain: fundraising can be separate from who does the work
… we need to choose company like EDRLab to do the work, as they are skilled in this area

George Kerscher: DAISY may bid on the RFP if we add staff
… but not at the moment

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: I don’t think that anyone was suggesting we serialize
… we need to figure out how we will manage funds before we solicit funds
… penciling people in is fine, but we need an answer when some one gives us a check

Bill McCoy: agreed

Tzviya Siegman: Liisa said what I was going to say
… EDRLab had not volunteered; we were talking about an RFP
… if other people want to work on the RFP it would help

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: I won’t have time for a while

Tzviya Siegman: neither will i

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: we need volunteers for RFP

Rachel Comerford: I can get the skeleton together

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: awesome!

Luc Audrain: this is one point we will bring to PBG next week
… any other comments?

2. WG/BG relations

Tzviya Siegman: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-publ-wg/2018Apr/0012.html

Tzviya Siegman: I sent this email to the working group after many discussions with Garth and Ivan
… we talked about it at PWG on Monday

Tzviya Siegman: https://www.w3.org/publishing/groups/publ-wg/Meetings/Minutes/2018/2018-04-16-pwg.html

Tzviya Siegman: one issue we talked about is that we’re concerned that the WG is divorced from the reality of business needs
… we want to talk about the influence the BG can have on the WG
… and we want the work of the WG to be in line with the needs of the BG
… we need to make sure our use cases are reflected in our specs
… my use case on WP for scholarly publishing is not widely understood; I’ll write it up
… there needs to be more interaction between BG and WG
… even though there’s overlap
… we want to make sure the chartered influence of the BG is actually there

Luc Audrain: it’s an important subject
… it matched with the idea I mentioned about a combined meeting at TPAC with BG, WG, and CG, focused on business subjects
… perhaps that’s too late
… this kind of discussion must be well-prepared

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: is there a particular discussion you’re having now that should come back to the BG?
… we can get that collaboration started if we have a topic

Tzviya Siegman: I could give you a history of how we got here, but it’s rather technical
… around the WAM spec
… our whole approach has been using readium technology, and so we’re essentially recreating EPUB with a different serialization
… so we need to take a step back
… how are we approaching WP?
… are trying to start with the web, or start with EPUB?

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: is the business question there, do people see a need for a native browser to open packaged publication documents

Garth Conboy: I think the issue is unpackaged

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: how do we frame that?
… if you ask if PRH needs a way to read EPUBs outside of reading systems, I don’t think we need that
… maybe we should
… but you have to ask the Q in a way that the business people can answer

Ivan Herman: let me go back to what Liisa said
… what you are asking is one of the possible business question
… another aspect is
… if we do what we plan to do, from the content point of view, there will be no different between what I can put on the web and what I can put in epub
… how important it is that web developers can use the exact same skills to make book content
… today web devs can’t make books, because they need to understand how epub is different from the web at large
… if we do WP right, that gap disappears
… and there’s a question if that has value for the publishing community
… going back to my original comment about TPAC
… we should not think in terms of a one-off get-together at TPAC
… why would American publishers come to Lyon for a 2-hour meeting? I don’t see that happening.
… we need a continuous channel between the BG and the WG
… another way of putting the problem is
… the WG might need to re-invent publications from the bottom up, and develop new APIs that might eventually be in browsers
… and with that we can do wonderful things
… which is interesting and challenging
… but I don’t know if that’s viable from the business perspective
… the other alternative is to be more pragmatic
… and perhaps start with what the EPUB 3.1 WG called browser friendly manifestation
… and add offline, and the ability to have an unpackaged publication
… the geeky folks would be happy inventing new stuff

Luc Audrain: the question of business case will be easier for publishers for EPUB4
… we have no roadmap for web publications as publishers
… we have started with WP because some kind of minimal architecture for web content to be published as publication
… this led to FPWD of WPUB
… even the infoset is far away from EPUB
… we have a tension here; if we started to do epub 4 we wouldn’t allow the web devs to publish light and easy web pubs
… but my company doesn’t see a business case from these simple WPUBs
… but we’re not discussing EPUB4 yet

Bill McCoy: going back to what tzviya said
… I’ve stayed out of the tech discussion intentionally
… partly because I was on the board of Readium, and was wary of conflicts of interest
… I think tzviya’s comments on the readium way vs web dev way
… is begging the question
… I see the web dev community bifurcating
… react.js is the most popular framework
… it ignores the dom and html
… it treats the browser as a detail
… it’s not a normal way, but it’s a practical way to build apps
… I think the readium world is similar
… it reflects an increasing schism in the web world
… I don’t know if business reasons will make the tech decisions for us
… markup vs script
… we need the tech folks to think about that
… the readium effort is driven by the priorities of the people developing the software

Bill Kasdorf: I haven’t been on the call for the last ten minutes
… my comment is based on liisamk_ comment, where PRH said that putting books on the web isn’t a priority
… but a scholarly publisher would say that’s exactly what they wanted

Garth Conboy: I think what Luc and Liisa match what Google thinks; not so interested in WP but interested in EPUB4
… might be opening to switch orders
… but the crux of tzviya’s email
… we looked at the enthusiasm around EPUB 3.2 and EPUBcheck, but not enthusiam around WP, as that’s longer-term
… maybe slow down WP
… maybe that’s reasonable, as BG is naturally more pragmatic

Ivan Herman: back to what Luc said
… the term EPUB 4 stands in the way
… we all have this tendency to merge two technical aspects
… one is content and one is packaging
… in epub3, these things are rarely separated
… in the outside world they are never separated
… doing epub4 first is a meaningless statement
… epub4 could be packaging around wp
… there is no contradiction there
… there are large publishing areas which do not care about packaging
… but this area is not represented in our BG
… I have contact with scholarly publishers, not only wiley
… they don’t care about packaging; they put PDF up there, but the primary medium for publication is the web
… so let’s not make a false distinction between EPUB4 and WP

Garth Conboy: I respectfully disagree
… when I start with EPUB4, I don’t think the packaging is important
… but when I say starting with epub 4
… I say take a look at epub32, see how do do everything in a web-compatible way,
… see what falls out

Ivan Herman: I see that as WP

Garth Conboy: maybe it’s a terminology issue

George Kerscher: can you repeat that?

Tzviya Siegman: I believe that we’re all saying the same thing
… what Garth, Ivan and I proposed was feature compatibility with epub in wp
… but will do everything epub can do now
… we don’t have epub:type, but we duplicate that functionality

Bill Kasdorf: +1 to WP is feature compatible with EPUB but is pure OWP

Garth Conboy: and likely be semi-round-trip-able with EPUB 3.2

Tzviya Siegman: so I can can open, well, not the package because it’s not packaged
… mabye we don’t need both pwp and epub4
… the functionalitiy is wp, the packaging is epub4

Luc Audrain: I’m not sure
… i don’t want epub4 to start before wp
… I want profiles

Bill Kasdorf: Bill K has always been in favor of profiles too

Luc Audrain: i think we should have this idea of web publication with idea of what makes pub different from web site
… then we have to build more complex things

Garth Conboy: q/

Luc Audrain: for example, we said a WP might not have a mandatory title, but it would be mandatory in EPUB4
… I need it to be what a web dev can do

Bill Kasdorf: +1 to Luc’s example of title not mandatory in WP but mandatory in EPUB

Luc Audrain: it can’t block any evolution/profile of WP
… we should move on from WP and start to build other specs as soon as possible
… then it will be easier to discuss use cases

Tzviya Siegman: I agree with you, too
… one suggestion on Monday was to start with a minimal WP and then add requirements
… or maybe adding requirements when we get to EPUB
… this is more a discussion for the WG
… the key point here is the involvement of the BG
… sometimes there are specific requests on features, but we also need general monitoring
… we’re trying to sync with use cases
… I’ll try to have summaries for the SC
… as ivan said, there needs to be continuous engagement with the BG

Ivan Herman: let’s not go into tech details
… the problem with the WG is a social engineering thing
… if we don’t have a clear framework, we dive into experimental things
… which may lead to years of discussions and standards that aren’t useful
… and w3c is less tolerant of this now
… this group can help keep the WG within business needs
… we have to accept hard facts
… in the next 2-3 years core browser things will not pick up things we define
… there may be specialized browsers built on the top of the core
… this has consequences on architecture
… is this adding active JS into the publication acceptable?
… this is the interaction we need constantly

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: tzviya, it would be great if you could give an update in the BG for what you proposed this week, and what you agreed on

Ivan Herman: +1 to liisa

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: in a way that helps them understand how this works for scholarly publishers, etc

Tzviya Siegman: i can do that

Liisa McCloy-Kelley: and as issues come up, you want to discuss them with the BG

Luc Audrain: the idea of a channel between BG and WG will help with use case
… what are business case of web publications? that could be a discussion we could have in BG
… what are the business cases? what can it do? what does it solve for companies? for publishers?
… and then we have the discussion again for PWP, and again for EPUB4
… bring in business cases at each step

3. Manga/comics Workshop update

Bill McCoy: I need one minute
… we are firming up plans for a manga workshop in Tokyo sponsored by Keio
… we have a couple of program committee members identified
… we should solicit the BG for volunteers; that should be on BG agenda
… I’ll defer details until BG call, where I could spend five minutes
… should this be agenda for next weeks BG call

Dave Cramer: why are we doing this workshop?

Bill McCoy: short answer: japan uses FXL a lot, and manga is half the market
… the concern is that we haven’t focused on those needs
… both for EPUB 3 enhancements and needs for WP etc

Luc Audrain: and EDRLab has also such a WG on Bandes dessinées / Comics /manga

Bill McCoy: the idea is to get experts together, so that manga are focused on

Luc Audrain: EDRLab has a working group on BD; we need to put together requirements with Japan
… no objections

4. Accessing Higher Ground, November 14-16 in Colorado

George Kerscher: update on AHG
… it’s a good-sized conf focused on higher ed; last year 650 people, this and CSUN are the 2 places in the US where we can promote EPUB
… some sectors of this community have been pushing back because they don’t understand it
… they’re used to chopping and scanning
… we have a track over three days
… we want to shape the proposals so we can educate that community
… Jonathan Thurston is chair of BISG a11y advocacy group, looks like it will be going
… over the next three weeks we’ll help people put together proposals
… some people from outside our community will be doing proposals for that track

Bill Kasdorf: what is the track?

George Kerscher: Accessible EPUB is here
… current stuff, why it’s great, conformance to standards
… use of Ace
… stuff vitalsource is doing
… stuff on a11y of reading apps
… best practices
… purchasing recs
… buy born-accessible content
… the LD community uses the Kurzweil product; their EPUB support is getting better
… lots of things

Rachel Comerford: george, how are we coordinating to avoid overlap in proposals

George Kerscher: jonathan has asked BISG for a coordination call
… BISG doesn’t have a mailing list for us

Bill Kasdorf: they’ve offered to create one

Luc Audrain: we can share by mail
… we are at the hour
… I can’t work on agenda now; liisamk_ or rick can you help?

Rick Johnson: I’m heading to Asia

Luc Audrain: thanks everyone